Developers Unveil Downsized Benn's Grant Development Plan

ISLE OF WIGHT — County planners got their first public look at a proposed plan for a smaller, less dense Benn's Grant community on Tuesday.

Property owners Henry Morgan and Richard Turner unveiled their revised master plan, which calls for 560 homes - 240 apartments and 320 houses of varying sizes - to be built on about 235 acres around the intersection of Benns Church and Brewers Neck boulevards. Approximately 17 percent of the homes and apartments would fall within the county's affordable housing guidelines, said Morgan.

While the new plan scales back the number of homes by 50 percent and eliminates an office park and ball fields, it still includes about 700,000 square feet of retail and commercial space.

And though some of the space is earmarked for small specialty shops, the plan also includes space for at least two big-box retailers and a hotel.

Wal-Mart - a source of contention among some residents when it was included in the first round of Benn's Grant plans two years ago - has not committed to becoming a part of the new project, Morgan said, during a meeting with the Isle of Wight Citizens Association on Monday.

However, the company's conditional-use permit application with the county is still active, said county planning and zoning director Beverly H. Walkup.

The outer parcels that will be developed along the Route 10 corridor will have a 70-foot buffer separating them from the roadway. That is considerably more than 25 or 30 feet that is standard in cities like Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, said Randy Royal, with Kimley-Horn and Associates, a Virginia Beach design firm.